TennoCon 2022 took place this weekend and while the fan event is largely focused on celebrating all things Warframe, developer Digital Extremes had a major surprise. During the event, they announced a brand new game: Soulframe.
Like Warframe, Soulframe is being developed as a free-to-play action hybrid-MMORPG. Digital Extremes is taking a similar approach to the game’s release – one of transparency, collaboration and iteration alongside the player community.
Soulframe is in early development but the surprise announcement was accompanied by a gorgeous cinematic trailer that sets the tone of the game. Themes of romanticism and fantasy are on full display, and Creative Director Geoff Crookes revealed:
“Our team is really interested in this idea of nature and humanity colliding and we’ll be exploring a lot of those themes through our own lens while playing with ideas of restoration and exploration.”
A more in-depth reveal from The Washington Post offers even more insight into the narrative themes of Soulframe. Inspired by works like “Princess Mononoke” and “The NeverEnding Story,” Soulframe illustrates the “collision between industry and nature.” Crookes described that the world is “angry about what’s been done to it.”
As for gameplay, because Soulframe is still so early in development we don’t have specific details. But we do know that Soulframe will embrace more of a slower-paced, melee combat system.
While Warframe is more of a faster-paced sci-fi shooter, Soulframe will focus more on melee. It’s going to be “a lot more slow and heavy,” according to Crookes.
That’s not to say it won’t have similarities to Warframe though. Cooperative player-vs-environment combat and procedurally generated will still be the focus of Soulframe. But whereas it took Warframe years to expand into more of an open-world type experience, Soulframe is being built with a focus on exploration. These open-world planets that Warframe has only recently added will be a core pillar for Soulframe.
Soulframe is probably a ways off but with Digital Extremes adopting such a transparent approach to development, we should get regular progress updates on what’s going on with the game. Platforms were not announced, but you can probably expect a PC launch with a console release coming at some point.